Sheep Guarding Llama

We did well getting up early this morning, getting everyone into the Yaris and hitting the road.  Today it is me driving and Dominica tried riding in the back with the girls.  It is really not that much driving.  Getting anywhere in Nicaragua just takes a really long time because the roads all move so slowly.

Don’t be fooled by the small size of the country of Nicaragua, just because there are not very many kilometers between the places that you want to go chances are it is going to take you rather a long time to get there.  I have heard the British give similar warnings around traveling around the UK: but you will need to multiply that effect here in Nica.

There are several issues that contribute to this.  First the speeds on the highways are slow, very slow.  The fastest highway that I have found in the country never goes about eight kilometers per hour.  That is just fifty miles per hour for the Americans and by contract Spain’s highways are generally one hundred and forty kilometers per hour – nearly double the top end speed.  And unlike in the US or in Europe, the top speed of the highway is rarely what you get to do.

In Nicaragua the highway just goes through towns and cities with continuous foot traffic on the sides of the road, never an extra lane beyond the two (two total, one in each direction) and never a shoulder to speak of.  The official speed drops from eight to forty regularly, often the top speed is fifty or sixty and during school periods the speed in an incredibly number of places, including all along the length of the PanAmerican which is the biggest highway in the country, drops to just twenty five!

There is traffic everywhere in the country, often in the form of slow moving trucks, pickups full of hitchhikers, scooters that struggle to get up to speed even going down hill and then there are pedestrians, bicyclists and, of course, horse drawn carts everywhere.  And that is not the worst of the traffic issues.  It is incredibly common for the road to be full of cattle, chickens or other animals. You never know what you are going to find.

Driving here is a continuous adventure and you need to think about how slowly you will be creeping down the highway when you begin to calculate out your plans.  That city might be only one hundred kilometers away, but it is going to be three hours before you have any hopes of getting there.

The drive was interesting, as they always are going into new parts of the country.  After not long we were able to see Volcan Conception on Isla Ometepe far south in Lake Nicaragua.  It is a gorgeous volcano.

We were on the road so early this morning that we were actually down to Rivas, the main settlement in the south west of the country, by ten thirty!  We were so early that we did not know what to do with ourselves.  I saw the turn off for San Jorge, where the big port is for the ferries that head out to Isla Ometepe which is so close that you can easily see it from here

We should have turned here to go to San Juan del Sur but we had not made any plans this morning beyond going to Rivas and figuring things out once we made it that far and I was not aware that our main turn off for San Juan del Sur was in Rivas so I drove right on through and apparently no one else in the car figured out that there were supposed to be navigating.

I thought that we would drive for a while yet, see a sign for San Juan del Sur as it is a major destination down south, and turn when we saw it.  The problem was we missed the first sign in Rivas and then missed the one in El Virgin.

I drove on and we got to see some lovely farm country and loads of new wind mills that have only recently gone up to generate electricity from the never ending winds that blow across Lake Nicaragua from the east.  That made for a very nice and interesting drive.

We got stuck in a horrible line of stopped trucks south of the wind mills and sat for a few minutes without moving before I decided that I was going to get out of the car and walk up for a ways to see if I could discover what was taking so long.  It did not have the feel of an accident and no one was turning around.  We were all quite confused.

I was getting quite far from the car when I started putting the pieces together in my mind and noticing tons and tons of the truck drivers getting out and just hanging out and how many seemed to know each other and how so many of the trucks were not carrying Nica licenses but were often Guatemala and then it hit me…. this was the line of trucks waiting to go through the security check point at the Costa Rican border!  I had accidentally driven all of the way to Costa Rica without realizing it.  That was quite a surprise.

So I walked back to the car and turned us around.  At least we had gotten to see the country all of the way south with our spare time this morning.  It was a really nice drive.

Our next mistake was the really bad one.  My overshooting of the turn cost us less than an hour, total.  Maybe little more than half an hour of total driving as we could easily turn west towards the ocean at La Virgin and in San Juan del Sur in no time.  Ryan was navigating and decided to turn us onto a backroad as a “short cut” to not have to back track.  Dominica and I should have stepped in with “this is totally crazy” but we could not see the map and we kept trying to verify that this was going to be an okay drive.

The drive ended up being, unbeknownst to us until later, a mountainous dirt trail running alongside the Costa Rican border.  It was a totally crazy drive where we had to creep over roads that were constantly bottoming out the car and I was unable to convince Ryan that we had pushed the Toyota Yaris beyond its limits until it started to stall out, with the pedal to the floor, trying to climb the mountain as it dropped to around two miles per hour.  After about an hour of some seriously intense driving we came to a downhill section so steep that we had little confidence in having the ability to return if we found the road to be impassable.  So very near the corner of the map where the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican shared border hits the Pacific, high on a mountain, we turned around and worked our way back to the PanAmerican highway.  We ended up losing more than two hours attempting that back road. Dominica was not amused.

Once back on the real highway we managed to get to San Juan del Sur in no time.  We drove into the city but did nothing more than drive in and immediately turn around since the city itself was not our destination and Dominica had found an available room at a resort nearby but wanted to get there right away in case they ended up selling out.

We drove north up a few beaches and found the Casa Bahia Family Adventure & Surf Hotel which sat high up on a hillside overlooking the Pacific.  It was a truly gorgeous location.  Another amazing hotel find by Dominica.  This was far and away the neatest place that we could have been staying in this area.  Nothing that we had driven past anywhere near here compared to it at all and the prices were not bad at all.  We looked at a few different rooms and ended up talking them into just $150 for the giant “has its own building” three bedroom apartment that exits directly out onto the pool and has three hundred and sixty degree views!  It was three bedrooms, two baths, four televisions, a living room and a very large kitchenette.  It makes no sense that this was called a hotel room, this really was an apartment.  We would happily live in an apartment exactly like that.  It has more than enough space for our entire family and would work for having visiting guests too with that spare guest room.  And one of the three rooms had two beds too!

In the girls room Dominica found the body of a dead scorpion.  It was huge (which is actually a good thing since the bigger they are the safer they are – both less venom and easier to spot.)  From what we can tell it was an adult bark scorpion.  Not particularly dangerous but they will sure wreck your day.  Dominica said that it had been dead for a long time – it was on its back behind a door and desiccated.  She called the desk to have them come down and sweep the place just in case anything was hiding somewhere.  Other than seeing where it was we did not look at it too closely after Dominica had determined the status. The girls were not even afraid of it and were fine playing in the room but were careful to stay away from just playing on the floor.

Later Dominica came out and asked if Ryan or I had been playing with the scorpion because it was not in the same position has before.  It was on its side rather than its back.  I got everyone out of the room and got in close and blew on it…. yup, it was alive and moving.  Not moving fast and certainly not a significant threat to anyone but dead and desiccated it was not.  The front desk ran down and someone jumped on it for us.  It was definitely dead then.

That was our first adventure with a scorpion anywhere, ever.  Neither Dominica nor I have ever seen one in “real life.”  We have seen them in museums and such, like at the zoo, but never in the wild.  Scorpion allergies run on Dominica’s side of the family so we have to take them as potentially more of a threat than normal people do.

Ryan took the master suite since it had the en suite bathroom.  Dominica and I got the small room.  The girls got a huge room with two beds so that they could spread out and play.  It was really perfect.  If we ever return to San Juan del Sur we will be staying at the Casa Bahia for sure.

It was barely after noon at this point so we were in the room very early.  We made the judgement call to do nothing else today but to enjoy being in a resort by the ocean.  We will get a great value out of this as we have so much time at the resort because they were mostly empty and we managed to arrive so early.

We were all hungry having eaten nothing all day, thus far.  So we went up to the resort’s restaurant and had a latish lunch out on the balcony.  The food was good.  Dominica got her first ceviche, which is the regional food of at least southern Central America.  You can get it absolutely anywhere in Panama with cevicherias being incredibly common even in poor areas and rural districts and I have seen ceviche reguarly in Nicaragua.

After lunch it was right down to the ocean.  Ryan was very keen to get to swim out in the surf.  The girls played and played in the sand.  I had to stay right with them.  A few times the water hit them so hard, even not being in the water directly and just playing up in the sand, that Liesl was dragged back with it and I had to stop her from being pulled out farther than she could handle.  Even here where the surf is considered tame the Pacific is very dangerous for swimming.

We had a really good time down on the water and we stayed until the sun had set and it was dark.  We spent some time hanging out with a local and talking about the Halloween customs locally since we were unsure how it was treated in Nicaragua.  More or less they are aware of the American traditions around it but do not celebrate it themselves.

We walked back to the hotel in the dark.  Once there we got the girls into the pool.  We had promised them swimming and they were very excited to get to swim at the hotel.  That our apartment sits right at the pool was awesome.  We pretty much had the pool in our living room (like back at the house.)  This was super convenient and nice.  We loved it.

There were three Brits there on holiday as well.  They work up in the Shetlands and work three weeks on and then get three weeks to travel.  So they are busy seeing the world in little bursts.  We hung out with them for an hour at least, possibly two.  Liesl and Luciana got into the hot tub with them and talked to them, continuously.  Liesl went on and on about how she travels the world and how they want to go to China and that she finds Egyptian studies so interesting that she considers herself to be part Egyptian.  They were adorable.

After they were out of the pool we hung out for a while and got Dominica dinner from the resort restaurant before they closed.  The restaurant accidentally serviced the girls chicken fingers instead of fish fingers and because the girls have no idea what chicken is they ended up eating some.  I took a bite and spit it out realizing what it was.  They girls had very little, but some.  Mostly Liesl.  The restaurant had added beef to Dominica’s vegetarian poasta too but she had figured it out and sent it back.

After Dominica and the girls had eaten and Ryan had hung out up on the terrace above our apartment and we had gotten everyone in for the night, Ryan and I went for a walk towards the beach to check out the Villa Mar which was the best rated restaurant in the area for our dinner.  Ryan had found it on TripAdvisor and wanted to check it out.

It was super hot and muggy sitting outside on the Villa Mar terrace but the food was truly fantastic.  We tried several different things and everything was really great.

After dinner it was back to the Casa Bahia and off to bed.  Probably no later than eleven.  We had a nice walk back to the Casa Bahia as the sky was relatively clear and there was very little light pollution.  So the stars were really nice.

Today is Friday.  Ryan is here today but we have no plans.  So once everyone was awake we started trying to figure out what we are going to do while Ryan is here.

For lunch, Ryan and I went to Cafe Isabella so that he could try local traditional Nicaraguan food. We had a nice lunch and were going to bring food home but Dominica and the girls ended up eating so we didn’t.

I was just home writing most of the day.  By around two in the afternoon, Ryan and I set out to do some errands and to see about renting a car.  We wanted to know how large of a vehicle that we might be able to get as we have three adults now instead of just the two of us.  We will not fit well into a Yaris.

We hit the bank, the shop and then stopped by the Hotel Plaza Colon to check out the car options.  All that they had that we could consider was either the same Yaris that we had before, literally the same one, or a massive Toyota Prada five speed turbo diesel that would seat eight for three times the cost of the Yaris and who knows how much fuel consumption.

We thought about it a bit and tried sitting in the back of the Yaris and decided that while it would be tight, the Prada was ridiculously impractical and we knew the Yaris.  So we rented the Yaris and drove back to the house with it.

I wrote for a little longer while Dominica packed and planning for the weekend was done.  We decided that we are starting with a trip to San Juan del Sur and then going to the Isla Ometepe.  I suggested that given that it was already started to get dark that it would not make sense for us to go tonight because the entire drive down would be lost in the darkness and all we would do is get there early, spend a lot of money on an extra hotel and have too much time there tomorrow.  Instead, I felt, that we should hang back in Granada tonight and go early in the morning so that we can enjoy the drive and not be down there too early.

We did not have any plans this evening so around five I asked Ryan if he wanted to take a quick drive out west from Granada to see an area that he would not be getting to see otherwise to make use of the remaining light.  So far he has only seen the city and this would be his chance to see something more.  He thought that that was a good idea.  So he drove and we headed south and west out of Granada on Route 4.

We drove down through Diriomo and up to Catarina and then to the west through Masatepe where we got pulled over for something that clearly did not happen.  They claimed that we were speeding in a construction zone when there was no construction zone.  The cop was really shady and weird.  He just kept lingering by the window and not really making any sense.  He kept saying something about using a computer or paying in Managua.  He stepped away for a minute and I told Ryan that I was pretty sure that he was waiting for us to bribe him.  Ryan had seen the fine listed on the paper that the guy was holding, it was five hundred Cordoba, which we had handy in cash.  I got Ryan to say “it is permissible to pay here?” and show the money.  The guy instantly grabbed it and told us to get lost immediately.  So we did.

We drove on to San Marcos and turned south to Jinotepe which I have been told is a really cool town.  It wasn’t bad but I am unclear what people liked about it so much.

As we headed east from Jinotepe we found a cool little asada called El Gallo Pinto.  So we stopped in and grabbed gallo pinto.  It was awesome.  I got fresh fried plantain chips to take home to Dominica too.

Straight back to Granada from there.  It was dark and there was nothing more to see tonight.

We all went to bed early.  Want to be up and ready at a good time tomorrow.

Ryan, who came to visit us while we were in Spain, is coming down to Nicaragua today and will be visiting us for the long weekend.  In Nicaragua this is a holiday weekend as Monday is Dia de los Muertes.  So Saturday through Monday is the long weekend.  Halloween is not celebrated here although from American media they are well aware of it.

Dominica spent most of the day cleaning and getting ready.  Not that much cleaning needed to be done since Johanna was here yesterday morning cleaning (and will be back in the morning before Ryan is likely to be awake.)  Having a maid, even just three times a week, is so awesome.  It is such a challenge for us to keep the house clean at the best of times.  Nine hours of cleaning a week does wonders for us and makes it so that we easily keep the place reasonably clean the rest of the time.

I did posting and writing all day.  It was relatively slow today.

Ryan flew from Newark, New Jersey down to Atlanta and then from Atlanta to Managua on Delta.  It is good to know that direct flights from Atlanta are easy to get to here, although I suspect that we will stick to United and AeroMexico flights for access to most of Central America.

Ryan had been planning on coming down to Granada from Managua on the bus but his flight was cutting it pretty close and so decided to just book a taxi instead for sixty dollars American.  Better safe than sorry even though it is a lot more expensive.

Ryan’s flight ended up landing a little early and he was at out house a bit before we expected.   I had never even managed to getting around to showering because everyone else had done so before me so I had been waiting for hours.

Since Ryan had been traveling all day we decided to go out and see the city a little.  We started by going down to the corner store where, right next door, Taco Stop was open.  Liesl and I had seen this opening two nights ago and Luciana and I saw it last night.  I’ve been watching the Taco Stop being built since we first arrived.  I am interested in checking it out.

So we stopped and go tacos.  They were really good. We tried both the hard and the soft tacos.  Ryan has been mostly vegetarian for a while now so we eat mostly the same things.

On the way downtown from the Taco Stop we had to deal with really persistent prostitutes chasing us down the street.  Such a weird place.  This is the first that I have seen any in Nicaragua.  The travel books talk about it a lot but apparently it is only downtown and only late at night.  It was after eleven by this point, probably the latest that I have been downtown yet.

Not much was open.  We started going to the south side of town.  The Philosopher’s bar was open and empty.  We went in and got a beer.  Nothing special.  It was completely dead so we did not stay for another.

We meant to head back to the house but I wanted to show Ryan the strip and while doing so ran into my waiter from the other night with Liesl at O’Shea’s so we stopped there and have Nica Libres before walking back to the house.

On the walk back to the house we discovered a twenty four hour pharmacy, which is good to know about.

I was up at five thirty this morning.  Came downstairs and did some writing before the day got started.  It is nice to be back home after five days away.  Traveling is fun but having a routine is fun too.

Ryan, who came to visit us in Spain, is coming to Nicaragua tomorrow evening to visit us.  He is going to be staying for nearly a week.

Today was relatively relaxing.  I had a morning conference call at nine.  Nothing else scheduled today.  I spent much of the day on MangoLassi getting caught up.  It is amazing what a few days on the road will do for getting me behind on things.

This afternoon I finally got Dominica and the girls to go out with me to the pasteleria around the corner.  Dominica and I got coffee, which was awesome as it was full European style espresso in a fancy coffee shop, and treats for everyone.  Dominica and I got cheese cake and each of the girls got a cupcake.

Ciana got sick this afternoon.  At first we thought that it was just constipation but by evening she had a fever.  She ended up moving up to our bedroom with the AC on and just laying in bed watching her iPad or napping for much of the day.

Today was quite hot, probably near ninety degrees.  To make matters worse, in the early evening the power went off.  That means that the fans stopped and the air conditioning that I had turned on for Ciana went off.

So I went for a walk to figure out what had happened with the power.  I only had to go one block before it was obvious that the power lines were down and people were working on them.  I saw some of the expat guys sitting at Cafe Isabella so I joined them for a beer and caught up on the local news and watched the progress on the power lines so that I would have an idea of how long it was likely to take.

I got back home and Luciana was still in bed.  Dominica and Liesl were in rocking chairs by the front door just like locals.  It was weird to find them ttha way.  Liesl decided that she wanted to go out to dinner with me tonight and that we would bring back food for Dominica.

Just as Liesl and I were about to leave, the power came back on.  So we got Ciana her AC back and before leaving we got the fridge set back up as we had had it defrosting all day.

Liesl decided that she did not want something that we had had before as she felt that we had not explored enough different food in Granada.  So we walked all over downtown and down the strip.  She eventually settled on O’Shea’s after going in and reading several menus around town.  We both got fish and chips for dinner.

The dinner was okay but nothing great.  Liesl did not really like hers so I ended up eating most of it.  While we were having dinner our bracelet seller from a few weeks ago recognized us and came over to say hello.  Liesl got an anklet from him.

After dinner we went to Nectar and ordered take out fish tacos for Dominica.  While we waited Liesl told me all about the new Mario Bros. came on the WiiU that she wants to play.  There are all of these video game channels on YouTube that she watches and learns all about new games that way.

It was a really nice evening getting to hang out with Liesl just the two of us.  We never get to do things like that.  We had a great time.

We got home and Dominica ate dinner while we watched The Nanny.  Luciana still has a fever and a tummy ache.  But with the AC on she was not as bad as she had been.

Around nine thirty everyone was in bed but I was not tired and wanted to do some writing so went down to the kitchen to sit up for a while.

We had to be up very early this morning to make sure that we could be up, packed and out the door by eight.  So the alarm was set early but most of us were restless during the night.  Although the room was awesome and the sleep that we got was fine.

I decided to get up early because I wanted to see the sun rise over the bay as we had a rare spot where our hotel room looked out over water to the east.  When I went down to go out to the deck I found Luciana already awake.  She said: “Look daddy, the sun is coming up.” in a little, quiet voice.

Dominica got up not too much later and Liesl woke up to see the sun come up too.  So everyone got to watch it, it was a very special morning.  This is the first time that Liesl and Luciana have seen a sunrise!

Dominica and I sat outside for a while and the girls used an iPad in bed.  But we were all up so early that we ended up leaving the hotel room by seven thirty, a bit earlier than we needed to, just because we were all ready to get moving.

We turned in the room key and then went down to the water front tiki bar for breakfast.  We had a nice, big breakfast.  Both girls had pancakes.  Dominica and I have huevos rancheros.  It was all very good.  And the orange juice was amazing; they must have just squeezed it.  There was enough breeze coming off of the water that even though it was really hot we did not feel like it was all that hot.  It was really nice.  Maybe we are adjusting to Central America.

After breakfast we got the shuttle over to the beach and spent some time at the ocean.  First we walked the beach.  The girls played in the sand.  I walked some and encountered a lot of sea snails which was pretty unique.

Then we swam in the infinity pool by the ocean until it was time to go, about eleven thirty.

Back at the main complex we ran into a woman and her son there that we ended up talking to for half an hour.  So it was half past noon when we finally managed to leave the resort.  Later than we had intended by a bit.  So we are in a time crunch to get back to Granada as we believe that we need to be there by five to drop off the rental car.

The drive out the long dirt road, then the long brick road took a while. Then onto the highway and off to the south.  There is always traffic and always a truck or two that is determined to go 40 kph or slower, so you tend to get stuck in some crazy traffic for seemingly no reason on a regular basis.

We stopped to get gas in Chinandega but the Uno was out of gas.  We had to run across the traffic circle to get gas and to put air in the back right tire that had gotten low.  After doing that Luciana needed snacks so back to the Uno which had a mini market.  I ran in and stocked us up.  Then back on the road.

We drove past Leon again and through Managua approaching it driving along the lake.  This was our first time seeing this region and our first time actually seeing any of Managua, although there was not very much to see.  We do not know how close we were to downtown or what we might have missed.  But we drove through a lot of the city.

It was an interesting drive even though we did not get to see anything but the fringe of Managua.  The drive from Managua to Masaya was interesting as this was a very different approach to Granada than we have seen before and it really gave us a very different perspective.  We could not see that in many ways with Masaya directly in the middle that the Managua metro area was engulfing Masaya and you can barely tell where they switch from one to another and the gap between Masaya and Granada is very small.  This explains why Masaya is so large.  The country’s first (Managua), third (Masaya) and sixth (Granada) largest cities are growing into each other and are already starting to form a single metro area.

We raced to the house and dropped off our luggage and got to the Dollar rental lot with only minutes to spare.  We dropped the car off directly with Carlos who was waiting out back and then went up to check in at the office.  It turns out that the race was a waste of effort as we needed to have dropped the car off by one.  We could have kept it until the morning.  At least it is dropped off and dealt with.  Now we don’t have to think about it tomorrow.

Once the car was dropped off, Carlos drove us to a gas station so that we could fill up and not get charged.  Then he dropped us off at home.  They are very nice and Dollar, we will use them again.  It was a total of $200 for five days of rental.

It was pushing six by the time that we were home and it was getting dark.  We were pretty tired. I logged in and posted for a little while.  Then Dominica wanted pizza and Luciana wanted to go to the corner store.  So Luciana and I walked down there and bought Kinder Sorpresa but she got a potty emergency and we had to race back home rather than looking for food while we were out.

Dominica felt like pizza so sent me uptown to go to Pizza Vale.  First I hit La Colonia and got a few small grocery items.  Then over to Pizza Vale and ordered dinner.

We watched some of The Nanny and had pizza.  Then off to bed.  We were worn out.